It’s a foreign-sounding request to an Astros fan base that has seen sustained success — or at least competitiveness — for the past 15 years, but rest assured Ed Wade is not the first executive to ask for patience.

Sometimes the request is spoken, as it was when Wade made the plea after trading away two central figures in Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt. Other times it is unspoken.

But as the Astros embark on what they hesitate — with various levels of brusqueness — to call a rebuilding project, the more important dichotomy is that sometimes your patience is rewarded, and sometimes it isn’t.

The Florida Marlins asked for patience when they bulldozed a World Series champion after the 1997 season and went on to lose 108 games the next year. Five years after that, with the young players who got an opportunity in the wake of the liquidation, they were celebrating another title at Yankee Stadium.

Tampa Bay Devil Rays fans were rewarded for a decade of supporting a perennial loser when in 2008 the young players came of age simultaneously and took the franchise — sans “Devil” — to the World Series.

They are a leading contender to go back this season.

And then there’s Baltimore and Pittsburgh, where patience has created patients.

Their beloved teams have been rebuilding for more than a decade each, and all they have to show for it in 2010 is the worst record in their leagues and respective 13- and 18-year playoff droughts.

The Astros’ roads diverge from here, and there is no telling which route they’ll take. Their farm system is getting better, but it is not among the game’s elite.

A little extra cash

But the Astros have one advantage the low-budget Rays do not — payroll flexibility created by the trades of Berkman and Oswalt.

“Obviously, we’re taking an appreciable amount of money back in both these deals with New York (Berkman) and Philadelphia (Oswalt), but it still has created some flexibility for us going forward,” Wade said. “If we do things the smart way, we’ll be able to take advantage of that. The goal is to get good and stay good for a long time.”

To the Astros, those are two different goals, which they believe they addressed by trading for players whose major league readiness will come in different time frames. Among the quintet acquired for Oswalt and Berkman, including a subsequent prospect swap, there are two major leaguers in first baseman Brett Wallace and starting pitcher J.A. Happ, one player they think is on the verge in reliever Mark Melancon, and two who will start their Astros careers in the low minors in infielders Jonathan Villar and Jimmy Paredes.

Melancon could join the big league roster next year and be accompanied by top pitching prospect Jordan Lyles and any number of outfielders who would help in backup roles as the team is constructed now, but there remain questions for 2011. Those were prompted by one answer: that owner Drayton McLane plans to keep the payroll in the same neighborhood as this year’s figure, which has widely shifted as transactions have occurred.

If he wants to match spending with the pre-trade payroll, he’ll have money to spend on free agency because even as arbitration raises will be due to Wandy Rodriguez, Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn among others, significant money came off the books this year. Kaz Matsui’s $5 million is gone four months after he was, Berkman’s planned $15 million from this year becomes only a fraction of the Yankees’ buyout, estimated at $1 million, and Oswalt will go from a $15 million obligation to roughly an $8 million one as he pitches in Phillies colors.

Wade didn’t discuss in any specifics the one-year plan, but he hinted at not expecting a major free-agent spree that would turn the team around instantaneously.

“There’s no quick fix in this thing,” Wade said.

And in that vein, the Astros have gone with youth in a longer rebuilding plan. They’ve gotten younger at the big league level and are getting there in the minors.

Bourn the graybeard

In a moment that happens in most workplaces — though rarely for 27-year-olds — Bourn scanned the clubhouse after Berkman and Oswalt left and realized he wasn’t one of the kids.

“I look around, and I see Brett Wallace, and I see (Jason) Castro and Bud (Norris) over there,” Bourn said. “Goll-ee. I guess I ain’t the youngest player no more.”

No, you’re not; you’re actually the 12th youngest on the active roster plus disabled list, and that’s not accidental. Nor is it a new trend.

Castro, a catcher and the Astros’ consensus top position prospect, was called up along with third baseman Chris Johnson and outfielder Jason Bourgeois on June 22 — the date that marked the end of the Astros’ campaign to contend in 2010 and the figurative beginning of 2011.

“It’s exciting,” said Johnson, who is hitting .341 in his rookie season. “I’m pretty grateful that I’m part of the movement they keep talking about.”

The faces of the franchise will be younger ones in that movement as 27-year-olds Bourn and Pence — the literal faces of the franchise judging by the pair of ads on Minute Maid Park visible from the east — will take on that hard-to-define role among those who play every day.

“It’s more of a youthful feel that I’ve never been a part of,” said Pence, who embraces the change and rejects any concept of a leadership void.

But Bourn and Pence aren’t at the age when one can expect tremendous improvement, and each is the type of player who would fill a supporting, rather than starring, role on a championship team.

So more is needed. More from the draft, more from the international market, more from player development and more from free agency.

The fix isn’t as quick as the three wins since Oswalt’s departure might indicate, but it doesn’t have to be as interminable as the process in Pittsburgh.

An open question

But for the first time in what has seemed like — and on occasion been admitted to be — a recent history filled with Band-Aid decision making, ignoring the pipeline and going for that quick fix, the Astros have asked for patience.

One year’s worth of patience with enough free-agent temptation or five years’ worth with an increased financial emphasis on the draft? A bottoming out and rise or sustained levels of not-quite-thereness?

The Pittsburgh plan, the Rays route or an even shorter comeback from this season on a pace for 70-92?